A Prayer of Faith

Some people have called my parent’s house a ‘farm.’ I don’t think it counts as a farm, because we didn’t really grow anything. Yeah we took care of a lot of animals, and had more land than most(nearly 2 acres!), but it wasn’t a farm. We had two horses, two dogs, two cats, two lovebirds, my sister had some fish, and I had a frog. The animal we had the most of though, was chickens. It was my job, for as long as I can remember to take care of the chickens. I would throw some feed around every afternoon, and hunt for their eggs, (we had free range chickens before it was chic :p). I was different than my siblings though, I liked the chickens, I liked them a lot. I named them all and could tell them apart even though they all looked the same. The weirdest thing though, was I managed to tame the chickens.

Normally chickens will only come to you when you’re going to feed them (they just know these sorts of things). My chickens came to me and my family members all the time, they would flock around our feet. If you bent down to pick up a normal chicken it would run away, my chickens it would just sit there and wait to be picked up and sit calmly on your lap or in your arms. I tamed them in this fashion, I would chase them until I caught them by their tail feathers. This would cause them to flap around wildly and since I was six and didn’t know much better, I would swing them over my shoulders (still by their tail feathers) and walk like that till they calmed down. After they calmed down, I would hold them on my lap and pet them, then I would let them go. I did this every day because I liked the chicken and wanted to pet them. Eventually they figured out that if they didn’t run away then I would just pick them up and they could skip the part where they get swung over my shoulder.

Now, on to the point of this post. Three words, Chickens Are Stupid. Say it with me once, “Chickens are stupid.” Yeah, they’re hilarious, and can do some really neat stuff, but they’re still dumb as posts. I’ll tell you how I know this. One year all 15 of our hens were eaten by a few coyotes. I asked my mom how on earth they coyotes got into the chicken yard. She told me that the coyotes never set foot in our yard. What coyotes do, is run around frantically barking and howling with the intent of frightening the chickens. The chickens panic, and begin to run around frantically themselves until the chicken flies over the fence right into the coyotes happy jaws.

(I hear you saying, “Wait a second, if chickens can fly, then why do they stay behind a fence?” Two reasons: One, they can’t fly that well, and Two, they can’t be bothered to do something that strenuous for no good reason. The same reason a four foot wire fence can keep a herd of cows in.)

So here’s the thing, the chickens didn’t realize that the fence was protecting them from the coyotes. They were so panicked and frantic that they didn’t consider the idea that in this case the fence was their friend. They forgot that if they just stayed there behind the fence then the coyotes would be powerless to do anything but bark, and growl.

Here’s the sad part, too often we are just as stupid as my poor dead chickens. We see Satan (in some form or another) frantically waving his arms at us, looking dangerous, and making us scared. We then feel constrained by the commandments, and feel that if we continue to follow the commandments then we will be trapped. We forget that God has promised to keep us safe. (D&C 82:10) “I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say, but when ye do not what I say ye have no promise.”

An obvious example of this is tithing, we see financial ruin nearby, and fear that if we stay inside the ‘tithing fence’ we will be trapped by it. Another example might be the Word of Wisdom. We see death and illness, and feel that if we limit ourselves to the boring lifestyle of the WoW then we will never have truly lived when death finally does get us. We forget that the boring lifestyle is often exactly what keeps death and illness out of our lives.

The things we try to escape by breaking the commandments are often exactly the things that await us when we do. We forget that the fence isn’t really there to keep us in, but is mostly there to keep them out. God doesn’t want to make our lives boring and miserable by giving us a ton of rules to follow, he wants to keep us happy and safe by keeping us from walking, or flying into the jaws of the coyotes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 27th, 2006 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Whisperings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.